Of Warpspawn and Shinobi
by Red Guardsman
Summary: The practice of sealing and utilizing demons has always been of questionable morality among the Elemental Nations. Of course, a Ninja wouldn't care about morality. There are some, however, who would scrutinize such things heavily. A ten-millennium old order, granted stewardship over the maw of the Warp by the Emperor himself. They are the Daemonhunters.
1. Face Value

If there was a Hidden Village of hypocrisy, it would certainly be Konohagakure no sato, better known as the Village Hidden in the Leaves. Or so it may have seemed to one young child, barely ten years old and currently being chased by an angry mob of villagers. Key words in that statement, however, being 'may have'. The child didn't acknowledge hypocrisy, hate or generally anything as really worth his energy and expenditure.

No, in the worldview of one Naruto Uzumaki, the only states of mind worth investing in were positive ones that helped take his and other peoples' minds off the troubles plaguing them.

Then again, when those positive states of mind came into contact with reality in the form of his more (admittedly) ingenious and (debatably) elaborate practical jokes, he simply could not know how it was possible that the villagers couldn't have liked his work! Repainting the Hokage Monument was a classic, sure, but it wasn't that far ahead of his usual jokes! Tossing pheromones into the Aburame and Inuzuka clans' respective feeding systems for their bugs and hounds was a hoot!

But debating any of it would get him in range of the angry mob behind him. Not good.

The orange jumpsuit-wearing child started lightly panting as he broke out onto his fourth mile of running from the mob. He could say what he wished, but all the running and hiding was really great exercise. And great on-the-go-thinking training. Surely that would be useful for a ninja! Naruto's dip, then subsequent rise in mood was unnoticed by the mob, however, as they continued to chase him.

Just another night in Konoha...

-][-

It was morning. The street was bustling, with the traffic of people moving about to their everyday stations - ninja to their commanders, shopkeepers to their counters, the few farmers and craftsmen in the village to their respective stations. The Monday brought a dull sunrise which gave a harsh welcome to the poor souls who had woken up around the 4 a.m mark to slave away at their jobs, to earn money and to pay rent and the like. Needless to say, the crowds' thoughts were jumbled to say the least, but ordered - organized even in their diversity.

And one man who could hear them all smiled wistfully, as he sipped some recaf out of his personal hip-flask. That man couldn't believe the utter _happiness_ behind the blanket of ignorance that was weaved over this village.

Certainly, ignorance was a powerful tool to hold over a population. Where he came from, it was all but the watchword for interactions between the common citizen and the threats that assailed mankind. What he was amazed at was the easygoing air that the village had.

He took another bite of his food - a local meal named 'dango', served on a stick - and slowly chewed it down. As he had guessed, it was fresh. Locally caught and made, most likely. But what gave him pause for thought was that it was real food. His less important crew had been surviving on little more than the standard nutrient bars given to ship personnel.

He silently reiterated that to himself - it was real food. Oh, it was nothing compared to the meals his brilliant cook usually prepared, but still, credit's given where credit's due. The man put down a tip of 250 of the local currency - ryo, he heard it called - onto the table and sat back, taking the time to simply relax and take a break. He could understand the language easily, listening into thoughts being one of the benefits of being a psyker, and as such the chatter around him was very clear and made perfect sense. His eavesdropping went unnoticed in the morning rush.

"How was your mission last night?" asked one of local armed forces - ninja, he recalled - to another. Though he knew it was typical of these ninja to work in secret, and even though this village tried to keep up a 'nice-guy' image, the appalingly lax way these ninja conducted themselves was disgraceful. One of them even had said 'Oh, sorry' to a civilian he had accidentally brushed past! Horriffic. He fought down a scowl of disgust and listened in to another table with two chatting villagers.

"Yes, I know! Moritake's had a really bad brush with the brat lately." Local pranksters? Not unexpected, considering these Hidden Villages utilized child soldiers, regarded as adults they may have been.

"Oh, what did he do this time?" By the sound of things, the subject of their conversation was quite the master of evasion. He would see if he could recruit this miscreant.

"Snuck into the Soukon and rearranged all the merchandise. Service was closed for hours while they reorganized it, I heard." He internally fought down a laugh, at risk of being noticed. This rascal simply HAD to be up for recruitment!

Though no more was said by the two citizens, he continued being amused internally. Then, one of them said something, which shook the eavesdropping man to the core.

"So when are we getting together to hunt the demon again?"

Ikotashi Yaaka was discussing with her friend Tokishi Mori the subject of them taking part in the 'demon hunting' mobs that cropped up now and then to go hunt down Konoha's orange-wearing Jinchuukiri when she was interrupted. Thinking of the rudeness of this stranger, she turned with a piece of her mind ready to be said to this stranger.

Then many things became evident. One, it was not a ninja that she was being assailed by. Ninja simply didn't dress like that - a heavy coat would restrict movement slightly, and the black-painted armor she saw under it wouldn't have been useful for stealth at all.

Two, he was _scary_. Most killers she had seen wore their killing of others as a status symbol, to show that they weren't afraid to take lives. Now, the civilian woman - just a baker herself, was no poet to be waxing eloquence but she could have easily said that this man thrived amidst fear and death.

Three, what she could see of his face was pitted and scarred, and long since torn by a mess of things. And with eyes like blocks of steel, he began to ask her questions.

"Daemon?" He had a strong accent, she thought. But she paid no attention to the strange way she pronounced the word; rather, she answered by impulse. She felt like a small, fragile animal under the gaze of something big, and dangerous.

"Yes, sir - that is, my lord." Thankfully, he did not notice her tripping up over her own words. "The Hokage keeps the demon in this village out of goodwill. We sometimes go and attack it en masse." It didn't even occur to her that this might be a little strange. Or that she was using phrases like 'en masse'.

He turned to Mori. Briefly, Yaaka felt as if she had blended back into obscurity.

"Both of you." Then, a spark lit up in Yaaka's chest. Some rebellious feeling which demanded clarity and reason, and deductions made by the whole truth, nothing but the truth, and the explicit truth. "This... Daemon. Tell me everything. Leave nothing out."

Some time later, Yaaka and Mori sat in dazes, wondering where the mysterious stranger had left. No words passed between them, for nothing needed to be said. Mori actually had her head propped up on her elbow.

"Hey!" They heard a distant voice call out. Both turned blearily, with thousand-yard stares coming to rest on three of the Village's chuunin. Gradually, the two civilians felt their thoughts start to clear up. The lead chuunin walked closer.

"Excuse me. We heard reports that you two were accosted by a strange man in a cloak? Can you describe him to us?"

For the life of them, neither Yaaka nor Mori could adequately reply. They just gave puzzled if not dazed shakes of the head to the disgruntled military police officers, who headed off again.

-][-

The Hokage's assistant, Kutsa Kai, was finishing up so that the Hokage's secretary could take over for him in the afternoon. He wouldn't lie, she was a hellishly attractive woman. And if one added in the fact that she got more paperwork done than most in the office, paperwork not exclusively of ninja matters anyway, then it was easy to see for which reasons the Hokage had selected her. Plus, she had a fantastic rack...

The assistant was shook from his thoughts when he spotted a man walking in through the front door. Annoyed, he got up.

"Excuse me, sir, the Hokage's office is closed at this hour-" But Kai spoke no more, as the man looked at him over his high collar.

Kai was hit with a wave of forgetfulness, just as a mild soothing sensation in the back of his skull manifested itself. But he looked everywhere, and saw stars twinkling away from wherever he looked. And that man's gaze shone like the sun.

Kai slumped back down, mouth drooping open slightly as the man walked on to the stairway that led up the building and to the Hokage's office.

The same fate awaited the Chuunin ninja who openly guarded the Hokage's office as they moved to stop the cloaked man. They slumped back, in dazes against the walls. The man was polite enough to set them down in sitting positions, sometimes. To make things worse for the village leader's guards, the ANBU that made assaults on him were stopped almost disappointingly easily and quickly. With some degree of stealth, too, if any casual observer were to be blase enough to look for that sort of thing, what with noise and attack vectors and all that. The various trained ninja were busy trying and failing to intercept the transgressor were too busy forming plans to take him down to pay attention much more than they would usually, however.

It seemed like nothing could touch this man. Any and all guards, regular ranking ninja or not, never seemed to be able to land a blow on the figure's cloaked form. To make things even worse, the figure was walking openly through and up the building! Walking! With seemingly not a care in the world, non-lethally taking down whoever came at him! Simple things like sleeper holds, and knockout blows to the temple, and other such maneuvers.

The few defenders caught up in the impromptu assault would have been slightly humiliated, had they not been busy trying to take them down. No-one thought to ring the alarm, either.

Then, it was up a hall and with two more ANBU incapacitated - or rendered into a state where they wouldn't be fighting immediately, anyway - that the last line of defense fell, and in his office, the Sandaime Hokage Sarutobi Hiruzen was making ready to combat the surprise attacker.

The few lucky, privileged and honored ANBU that were in the room were up on the corners of the room, blended in to match the corners of the office. They were lucky that this day was different to the many others they had spent in boredom. They were priveleged to defend their Hokage.

But more than all, they were honored to see the Professor, the God of Shinobi in action, if this brief and sudden attack could be called that.

The man had two halves of two different hand-seals in both hand. Certainly, casting two jutsu at the same time drained chakra like nobody's business, but then again he wasn't Hokage for no reason. His brief stint in retirement hadn't addled his mind, and his personal ANBU guards, the best of the best in all of Konoha's armed forces could see from the multitudes of kunai he kept up the sleeves of the Kage robes, not to mention the arsenal of devices and jutsu scrolls and sealing scrolls he actually kept close to his chest that he was ready for a long, grueling battle. Let it never be said that the Sandaime of Konoha was an unprepared man.

And the look, the gaze in Hiruzen's eyes. The bodyguards unfortunate enough at the forward corners of the room openly shivered under the ferocity of that gaze. It was one of a dying wolf, that would give one last fight before passing away. Though there wasn't much of a frown or a scowl to speak of, the angle of the old man's head and the intensity of the glare he sent towards the door spoke volumes on its own.

The footsteps kept on coming, and as they neared the door to the office Sarutobi readied himself. The aged Hokage hadn't caught much of an image of the attacker - the best the security cameras could come up with were images of a tall man in an all-covering cloak. That surfaced an old pet-peeve of Hiruzen's; Faulty intelligence.

The attacker came to right outside the heavy doors, and tensely the Hokage readied his office to be assaulted. He was guessing they would utilize a medium-yield explosive tag - one of those would make a mess of everyone in the office, let alone the door. That, or a low-power water jutsu to knock the door down, or a Earth technique to simply cannon the door into the office, making the heavy doors a weapon in their own.

The Hokage's mind went on in hundreds of possible courses of action, and jutsu he thought long forgotten raised themselves in his head. The tension became unbearable, then-

Two knocks. Just that, two almost polite knocks on his door. Sarutobi blinked. He could safely say he wasn't expecting that. A fool would decide to actually go answer the door, so he instead flung forth a small spool of ninja wire, hooking the door handles and pulling them inward with some deal of strain.

Who came through was not who he expected. Firstly, the cameras made him look smaller than he actually was. Standing upright, the aged Hokage could probably only reach shoulder-high to the mystery man. And more reason to stare became evident when he discarded his ragged, concealing cloak.

What lay underneath was an exquisite black coat with a high collar, which was only complemented when the stranger put on a dark hat with an exceptionally wide brim. Not the typical straw hat seen around the Elemental Nations, either - this one was a finely-made one with a large cap and a golden, stylized '-][-' (though with three dashes) facing forward.

And underneath that jacket, the Hokage spotted an elaborately-crafted suit of full-body plate armour. In this day and age of ninja and light conflict, that was a rare sight. Briefly, Hiruzen wondered if the man was some sort of samurai, or a emissary from a particularly rich, eccentic or endangered nobleman of Fire, or perhaps Cloud Country. Then again, he may have been of both. The armor was thick, and of a black metal in itself, made up of moderately-sized plates that interlocked to produce a formidable-looking metal shell around the man.

The man walked inside calmly while Hiruzen was still wary of a surprise attack. And he simply stood, on the other side of the Hokage's table, unconcerned by the look Sarutobi wore. Then, it was he who broke the tense silence.

"Sarutobi Hiruzen. Sandaime Hokage of Konohagakure no Sato. Am I correct in assuming I am speaking to you?"

The Hokage nodded, wondering what this man was playing at. The armored stranger reached into his coat. Sarutobi was milliseconds away from unleashing a _Katon: Twin Infernal Dragon Technique_ on the man by now. The tension could have cut a knife, nevermind the idiom.

But tension turned to hostile curiousity when the stranger took out a large sigil. It was carved out of what looked like gold, actually. It took shape of the same kind of sigil that was on the stranger's hat. When the stranger placed it down on the Hokage's table, it made a loud thump.

"Inquisitor Gregoriy Russ. Ordo Malleus. We need to talk."

* * *

Hello, everyone who reads this. First of all, I own neither the grim, bloody, epic darkness of Warhammer 40,000, nor do I own the Naruto multimedia series. They belong to Games Workshop and Masashi Kishimoto and/or Shounen Jump respectively. This is my rather casual foray into both series because I can do what I bloody well please, and this is a somewhat productive use of my time. To quote an excellent fellow fan-fiction author on here, 'if I owned either I wouldn't be paying rent and working in a grocery store'.

Any and all reviews are welcome; they give me an insight into your thoughts, after all.

Also, I'm tossing my Author's notes down here. Ursakar tried it with his story, and I think it works excellently.

Enjoy!


	2. Upon Discussion

Lord Inquisitor Gregoriy Russ of the Ordo Malleus sat before the Hokage, the leader of this village. Briefly, on the way here, the Inquisitor had wondered how a village so carefree and relaxed could call itself 'Hidden'. It did absolutely nothing to disguise itself, not even employing a light jungle canopy.

He was a Hive Worlder; a native of Vostoroya and then a very lucky orphan, while he was back then scrabbling for food amidst a ruined Hive Spire, when he was found and noticed by other agents of the Inquisition - Sisters of Battle that his future mentor Alexei Vorotnikov of the Ordo Hereticus deployed and utilized. His psyker abilities, which had manifested at an early age and honed by the Hereticus Inquisitor, were of excellent use in the field of intelligence. Infiltrating minds, divulging information and seeding false rumors was his forte. So it had hardly been difficult to adjust for his new role as intelligence gatherer - the appearance of a ragged if not starving or dying human child was not difficult at all to pull off for Gregoriy in his youth.

During his employ as the junior psyker, spy and impromptu scout of the Inquisitor's entourage he had seen much of humanity's worst. He had his brushes with the denizens of the Immaterium, and their servants also. Emperor's blood, their servants. The heretics and traitors he and the rest of Vorotnikov's forces had hunted were the utter lowest of the low; they fully and knowingly dedicated themselves to total, unrepentant and utterly wrong things that he would not tarnish his thoughts remembering too explicitly.

His first experience with the Immaterium was with a minor Lord of a Hive Spire on the relatively remote Hive World of Ahtyom who was a worshipper of the third of the Chaos Gods, the name of whom he would not tarnish his thoughts with. He had vomited his guts out that day at the sheer revulsion of the experience, as well as making his food exit that way for the next few weeks. Only when they did a cleansing for Warp Plagues did it turn out that nothing more than a very nasty stomach bug had taken root inside him. Still, the young Gregoriy had never been more thankful for the matronly Sisters that had ensured he was cured.

His ascension to full Inquisitor was met with some incredulity - he had taken over the ship of his former master, crew and all, and had vowed to undo the workings of Chaos wherever he would wander. It was with much hurt that he left the ranks of the Hereticus, and into the inevitable damnation that was the Malleus. Although, even as he purged world after world of Chaos cults and Daemon worship, he kept quite good relations with the various compatriots of his former mentor in the Hereticus. It was due to this and his fast learning of the ways of the Malleus that he was often forced to act as peacemaker and co-ordinator between the two sects.

He was entering his two-hundred and twentieth year of Inquisitorial duty, and he was just coming down from a successful and relatively bloodless purging of a large Chaos cult on Forge World Ackruuzt, and heading over to a nearby sector for his next Investigation when his ship was hit by a particularly turbulent Warp Drift, and shunted into reality. It was rather disconcerting to find himself in the far reaches of Ultima Segmentum, very nearly beyond the light of the Astronomican on Holy Terra when he was in actuality leaving the Gothic Sector to head to a somewhat more peaceful one in Segmentum Pacificus. Regardless, the Warp Storm did not allow him to leave the system and he was stuck, away from Imperial communication. He had decided to choose the third planet in the fourth system of the galactic-north-northwestern subsector, and with his ship orbiting around the pristine world. He estimated it to be a feudal if not feral world - from orbit, the continent with the largest amount of 'force in their souls', as his Choir of Navigators had put it, was the central one. Although his confidants and his second-in-command had advised against it, he opted to go alone down to the world, acting on the reasoning that one man would be harder to detect than his entire force. That had been true, to a point.

Now, however, he was faced with a choice; interrogate, subjugate, assimilate or annihilate. The first involved kidnapping the Hokage in his own office and taking him to his ship via his personal Teleporter and pumping the old man for every secret he had.

The second was to establish Imperial rule over this world, and kill everything that contested its rule. That sounded tempting - all of mankind needed the Imperium for its own good, although it would leave the way open for whatever was here from the Warp to begin with.

Though if he were to be true to himself, that wasn't an option that rang worthwhile. He didn't even need to be here, actually. He was just waiting out the Warp Storm trapping him in this subsector and occupying himself in the meantime.

The third way was to quietly dominate the world through covert attirition, and to force the populace to working to serve his own ends. He decided against that - it would take far too much time, and he was only on this Emperor-forsaken rock until the Warp Storm receded.

The last, of course, was to just not bother with the whole issue and to just Exterminatus the planet, and alter the records so that they showed that the world was destroyed when other Imperial forces arrived. He decided not to entertain that one - he did not think this world was beyond that point.

On the inside, he reviewed his knowledge which he had gathered by sifting through the idle thoughts of the populace. There was a surprisingly large amount, to be honest. He knew that this Hidden Village was not like the others, preferring to provide an open and supportive stance to the citizenry of Fire Country, the nation in which he now walked. The ninja were also remarkably lax, decades of peace doing no good for their danger senses and tactical thinking. Briefly, he wondered about that - many of the ninja he encountered seemed to have some sort of entitlement complex, to which he countermanded his guess by recalling the knowledge that many ninja were in clans before the Hidden Villages began arising, and the clans had settled down to co-operate with the Kages of the various villages. The known history seemed to stop before the Sage of the Six Paths. That was a fact he found odd.

Looking over it all, he had made the conclusion some time ago on the way to this office that this continent heavily favored a theme reminiscent of the Ezhan nations of Ancient Terra. The spiky, intricate sigils were slightly reminiscent of one of the more popular sub-languages near the Mungolyan sectors of the Imperium, and in particular several of the feudal worlds in the sectors near Mundus Planus, the White Scars homeworld. Furthermore, the ninja tended to favor stealth and subterfuge - poisons, traps, decoy tactics, illusion and deception strategies were all fair game to the warriors of the shadows in these Elemental Countries. The Officio Assassinorum would have loved to get their claws into these people, Russ thought. Though one thing intrigued him especially; the school and the art revolving around supernatural warfare.

Chakra. The initial reports about drawing energy and forming it into actions which bent the laws of reality had him severely concerned at first. It had sounded all too familiar to the sorceries of heretics; the stuff of the Warp, of Chaos, and of Heresy. But as he learned more his concerns were quashed, if only slightly. It turned out that the use of Chakra and Jutsu - the techniques to control the energy, similar in principle to the rituals of magic but a great deal less complex - allowed for the ninja to twist the elements and fight one another using this method to more effectively fight one another. He knew that some of the civilians regarded the ninja as near-mythical things for that reason. Not an unreasonable thing, mind - the average Imperial citizen would revere a psyker who could control their powers and themselves effectively. That principle worked with these ninja also, again not without having reasonable foundings.

An intriguing, albeit welcome detail he learned was that Chakra was the combined mental and physical energy of the person who wielded it. Though that brought up questions of its own, questions regarding the nature of the natives of this world. Those mysteries, however, were for those among the Ordo Xenos, and therefore not his concern. What was his concern, however, was a critical fact that he had overheard, by word of mouth as opposed to his psykery. The poor women who he had mentally Dazed would come to in a while, hopefully around the same time that the guards he had knocked out would. He did admit, taking down every single guard who had come at him non-lethally was fun. He hadn't had that much in years - decades, even.

It was in tension that the silence was broken between himself and the Hokage. The aging man had broken it first, he noted internally with some bemusement. "Why did you decide to attack me, in the center of my village?" the old man asked, grim under the conical white-and-red hat he wore. Russ laughed a little, if a twitching of the lips and a huff of air out of his nose could be called that.

"Because the situation required it, and I have no time to deal with the petty bureaucracy. I'm certain you can understand." the Lord Inquisitor replied. "One issue before I begin, however, may you have your guards wait outside? Their attempts to hide are irritating."

The aged Hokage widened his eyes slightly, to which Russ merely inclined his head slowly, waiting for the old man's order.

The Sandaime sighed, before calling out "Guards, leave us." True to his command, four figures materialised in puffs of smoke behind the chair where the Inquisitor sat. They briefly bowed to their Hokage before leaving out the door. Gregoriy straightened in his chair, before levelling his gaze on the old man.

"I am told you have a daemon in this village."

=][=

Hiruzen was shocked, to say the least. Not that he would let this 'Inquisitor' have any indication of his emotions. Jinchuukiri were the greatest weapon of any Hidden Village - their power could make or break wars, let alone entire battles as well as keeping the village bearing the sealed demon in peace from its enemies. Konoha held the Kyuubi no Yoko, though it was more widely known as the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox. It had rampaged through the village some years previously, and it was only brought low when the Yondaime (or Fourth) Hokage gave up his life to both cast half of its chakra away into the belly of the Shinigami, and to seal the other half inside a newborn child. That newborn was the cause of many of the villagers' woes, though he hadn't nearly done enough to deserve the hate that was poured upon him daily.

Now, though, this Gregoriy Russ, which itself was a foreigner's name if the old man had ever heard one, had walked in and in one phrase, exposed the secret. Though it was a poorly kept one, if he were to be honest with himself. Regardless, the aged Hokage was once more on guard, and readying a jutsu to be used point-blank into this Inquisitor's face.

"What would you ask of me had I confirmed that?" Sarutobi lowly asked of the black-armored man before him.

"To go see it. What else?" this Russ asked of the aged Hokage, who scowled slightly and glared, which the Inquisitor met with a cold, unrelenting gaze of his own. Finally, Hiruzen acquiesced and lowered his head slightly while reaching for the intercom button.

"Yomi. A word, if you would." No sooner than the old man had let go of the intercom button, a masked jounin appeared in the room in a burst of smoke.

"Go bring Naruto here. Priority." And as soon as the masked man was gone, the Hokage resumed the tense standoff with the Inquisitor sitting before him.

Eyes narrowed and a tiny amount of killer intent leaking out, Sarutobi asked with not a slight amount of venom; "What do you hope to accomplish by this?"

The stranger merely leant back, his high collar obscuring some of his face. "I intend to see whether this daemon is sufficiently imprisoned. It is undoubtedly corrupting those near it, so you may as well write them off as dead." the stranger said nonchalantly, turning his head to gaze out of the window behind the Hokage, who seethed internally.

Hiruzen settled for leaning back. The Inquisitor before him was so badly misinformed. Surely if he could see the boy, then his assumption could be shaken, if not removed outright. The old man didn't think much of the man to begin with, and he highly doubted this Inquisition had much pull in the Elemental Countries. Certainly, the man looked rich, and who was to say there weren't others who were just as hardcore as Gai in their devotion to physical training? It was highly unlikely, but not impossible.

"However." the man began. Sarutobi's attention flicked back to the Inquisitor. "I wish to know how exactly you managed to bind this daemon. Please leave nothing out."

Sarutobi sighed. This would take a while. He was spared, mercifully, by the arrival of none other than Naruto himself. Granted, he was being led along by Yomi but Naruto had come quietly, in respect to the Jounin Commander's rank and standing in the village, but it was good to see the boy had common sense, at least. The Sandaime sighed and turned back to the stranger.

Several seconds of silence passed, before the Inquisitor broke it. "Well? Are we going?"

"To where?" Sarutobi asked.

"To wherever you hold this Daemon... you do not mean to tell me that you let it roam unchecked?" the Inquisitor's voice turned deadly. Sarutobi actually bared his teeth at this. In the doorway, Naruto fidgeted uncomfortably. He never liked people ignoring him, or talking those sort of things about him and now the strange man in black was doing both.

"The 'Demon' you refer to is standing right there." Sarutobi ground out.

If anything, that managed to shock the Inquisitor. He actually froze, and the small section of his face visible to Sarutobi turned slowly to Naruto, his expression slowly turning to incredulity and surprise. That put a vindictive smile on Hiruzen's face. Although the rough features of the man didn't betray much, the man's change in stance revealed all Sarutobi needed to know. Though the heavy coat and the undoubtedly heavier armor may have utterly obscured all visible tics and expressions, Sarutobi was still able to discern that whatever the man was expecting, it was not this.

"... One second, if you would." the Inquisitor said, before he tilted his hat downward, obscuring the top half of his face. Just as well, because an unearthly light started to glow from what Hiruzen presumed was the stranger's eyes, and... weird things started happening.

The water in the glass on his desk froze. At the same time, smoke started to gently rise from the open glass to curl and fall downward to roll around the saucer underneath it. The air started to get cold and prickly, irritatingly so, and yet the old Hokage found himself sweating. Heat wasn't the only thing changing - the sounds from the market seemed to fade, buzz, roll and grow utterly at random while the drops of water from the chakra-sensing plants of the Hokage office sounded like boulders rolling down a mountain. He swore the light of the evening sun, and even the floor underneath his feet seemed to move and change around him. Just then, Hiruzen realized that he sensed no disturbances which were normally associated with justu.

That was one thing he didn't look out for, he recalled with a jolt. A chakra pathway or system could tell much about a person, if one knew how to read it correctly. Sarutobi himself considered him adept at that practice - one did not need the Byakugan of the Hyuuga clan to be able to tell things from a person's chakra pathway. However, when Hiruzen made efforts to detect such a thing, he was utterly stunned. Whatever he was doing that was causing these strange warpings of reality, it did not expend chakra. Though that wasn't the improbable if not utterly unbeleivable part.

The Inquisitor had no chakra pathway whatsoever.

By all the laws of reality that he cared to recall, the Hokage knew that all living things had chakra. Yet here in front of him was a man who didn't bear any signs of development towards having anything even remotely resembling the river-like constructs that coiled throughout one's body at all. The Inquisitor before him did something that Hiruzen was unable to discern, and the lights of a hue not meant for the eyes of man that had been streaming from no readily obvious source went out, and all the strange happenings stopped. And the Inquisitor before him leant back, smiling.

=][=

On the inside, Gregoriy could have been counted as the most relieved man alive. Through his Clairvoyance, a certain pattern to utilise his psyker abilities that he picked up some time in his youth that he could not care for remembering, he saw that there was indeed a Warp Entity inside the boy. Although, it bore a far weaker presence in the aspects of the Warp and mindcraft than the Daemons of the Archenemy. No, whatever was inside him was also something that was tied to this force called 'Chakra'.

Privately, Russ was interested. The orange-clad boy seemed to harbor little to no signs of the usual mutations that a Warp Entity would leave upon its container, save from those odd marks on his face. Regardless, the taint of the Warp was very faint in the child, almost as faint as the subtle corruption of the Cadians. Then again, having a demon sealed inside your gut would likely garner some cause for corruption. From what he had determined through his Clairvoyance, the corruptive presence tended to stay inside the boy's body rather than be spread slowly throughout everywhere.

He turned back to Sarutobi, bearing a smile he didn't know he was sporting. "It seems that I owe you an apology. There's near nothing to worry about." he said, gauging the Hokage's reaction to his statement. True, both his professional and personal concerns were in vain.

"Excuse me, what in Kami's name just happened?" the old man said in a dangerous tone. Gregoriy's smile faded. It seemed like the boy was a soft spot of the old man.

"I took a look at things and it turns out there's nearly nothing to worry about. Certainly, there is something in that boy's gut, but it's-"

"Huh? What's this weird man talking about, jiji?" the boy burst out. Now, the old man looked wary, as if he had verbally struck a great blow. Russ frowned, slightly. Either the old man was normally completely at ease within his office and thus unused to disruptions, or he was far too open with his emotions. For one of this world's ninja, anyway.

It looked like the Hokage was making a hard decision. Russ's gaze alternated between the strained old man and the orange-clad boy who had walked in to sit at the table's edge. Far away from him, supposedly. Finally, the old man decided to speak up. By the angle of his head, Inquisitor Gregoriy assumed that the Hokage was speaking to them both.

"Five years ago, on the tenth of October, this village was attacked. By the Kyuubi no Yoko, the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox." As the old man paused, whether for breath or for dramatic effect, Russ mentally noted that whatever consisted of the locals' thoughts on superstitious spirits was likely an unbeleivable distance from the knowledge gained by the Imperium over thousands of years, and paid for in untold billions of human lives. It put a grim contrast on the comparitively enlightened Inquisitor.

"That's my birthday, jiji!" Naruto suddenly interrupted to the surprise of the two men. Sarutobi blinked, and the Inquisitor shook his head, an unseen smile behind his collar. Innocence proved nothing, for there were only degrees of guilt, as went the motto of the Inquisition. However, children had such a low amount of it, and it was only ever disturbed by the most trivial of matters that Russ couldn't help but be mollified, ever so slightly.

"Yes. It is. And that's the point, Naruto. What happened that night?" the Sandaime asked of the young boy. Russ caught the old man's game - Sarutobi was trying to include the boy while also telling him this information. If Gregoriy had to guess by the way the child fidgeted even as he tried to come up with an answer, the child was a restless one. Whether it was by nature or a sign of the Warp Entity's influence inside him, the Inquisitor could not tell. Not this early, anyway.

"Uh... the Yondaime beat the fox?" Naruto tenatively answered. The Inquisitor sat back in partial obscurity, simply watching and listening to everything raptly. He still failed to lose the Hokage's attention, however. Gregoriy silently increased the man's standing within himself. Most political animals he had encountered would nearly have forgotten him being present in the room at all.

"... No, Naruto. It..." the Sandaime paused. Russ noted that the old man was faltering - some big secret was about to be let loose. Suspicions started flying in the Inquisitor's mind.

"No mortal man can kill a demon, no matter how much chakra they use or whatever weapon they can use against it." Sarutobi stated gravely across the table, folding his hands and looking over at the two of them. Gregoriy reasoned that perhaps their knowledge of the Immaterium was not as wrong as he had guessed - the old man knew that Daemons could not be bested with their own energies, at least.

"The Nine-Tailed Demon Fox was not destroyed that night, Naruto. The Yondaime called upon the Shinigami - the Death God itself." the Hokage stated grimly to the young child before him. "He ensured that half of the Fox's chakra was consumed by the Shinigami, and half..." Sarutobi paused. Russ frowned slightly. Was that a tear he saw in the old man's eye? To his credit, though, the Hokage's voice remained steady.

"The remaining amount of the Nine-Tailed Fox was sealed away. Into a newborn child." Hiruzen stated. No reaction was forthcoming from the young Naruto, but in the Inquisitor's head, things started to make more sense. The fact that it was paranormal, even by the strange ways of this world, was proof enough that this was an issue worth investigating. Though his speciality was toward Chaos and the unspeakable evil not meant for the minds of mortal men, one did not see so many of the enemy without picking up something of their ways and patterns.

Judging from what Russ saw of the child, it seemed that the boy was remarkably quick on the uptake. For one of his age, anyway. The Inquisitor decided to let things play out before him.

=][=

Naruto sat there, resisting the urge to burst out into tears. For all his life, he had been shunned, disliked and insulted, and now it was falling into place as to why. His birthday being on the same time with the Kyuubi's attack, the villagers calling him 'demon' all the time, his treatment... In all honesty, Naruto wouldn't have liked to do anything more than break down and cry right there. But something kept him back, something to do with that strange man in black. Shocked into thinking, Naruto began to form his words.

"So... I'm the Nine-Tailed Fox?" Naruto asked dejectedly. "Everyone keeps calling me demon."

"Of course not, Naruto-kun." the old man said, at exactly the same time that the strange man in black said "Thankfully not." The men turned to look at one another in brief surprise at that.

Naruto, on the other hand, wanted more information. "But you just said, jiji-"

The Hokage merely took up a scroll and a kunai. "Look." he asked of the child. Naruto perked up, rapt at attention. The strange man was far from his mind right now.

As the Hokage sealed the kunai into the scroll, he held the roll of seal-laden paper up for the boy's inspection. "Now, Naruto. What is this, a kunai or a scroll?"

"A... A scroll." Naruto said, realising the truth. "So... am I just the container or something, jiji?"

"Yes. More accurately, you are a Jinchuukiri. The demon within you is the Kyuubi." Sarutobi said wearily. Then, the stranger made his presence known again.

"So... the boy is at once a jailer, prison and cell for the beast?" he queried of the Hokage, who nodded.

"Hai. Wait..." Sarutobi turned to the stranger, not noticing that Naruto had started crying tears of joy and relief.

=][=

Russ was allowing things to play out before him when the old Hokage returned his attentions upon him. The Inquisitor inclined his head somewhat, paying polite respect to the man.

"Why did you say 'Thankfully not'? And back to my question, just who are you and why are you here?" the Hokage asked. The Inquisitor tilted his head slightly to the side in thought.

Again, he had a decision to make. Trying any form of subtle deceit or subterfuge was ill-advised, considering that he was in what could have been accounted for as a fortress for those that practiced in stealth and deception, as well as tactics which would garner the Officio Assasinorum's attention post haste. Trying to kill everyone here was a waste of time, frankly - he felt certain that the 'guards' that assailed him weren't even worth the cost of the munitions he carried. Then again, if he let the truth come out, Emperor alone knew how that would play out. He had figured out within minutes of data-gathering some time ago that a world with such desperation as this - desperation to do better, to survive, to not go quietly into the night... It became obvious he could not tell them the truth. He could, however, take refuge within surprise, and audacity.

Grigoriy decided to act on that, then. "I cannot tell you. Not now, anyway. However, I do need to ask one thing of you. You two must come with me and we must go now, lest the moment be lost." As he finished, he stood and started to walk on out of the office.

Russ was focused fully on departing, until the whizz of metal through the air and one of the natives' metal knives being embedded in the doorframe mere inches away from the edge of his arm.

Slowly, he turned with some anger to the Hokage, whose face was now locked in a rictus of fury. Idly, Gregoriy also noticed a slightly scared Naruto to the side of the old man.

"You come into my village, fight your way through my guards, and now when I ask for answers you turn and say 'not now'! Who the hell do you think you are?" Sarutobi asked, all semblance of patience lost. The Inquisitor briefly entertained the thought of teleporting back to his ship and blasting this place into a charred crater for the old man's insolence.

In his thoughts, Reason won out in the end, and the Inquisitor slowly walked back to the table. He and the Hokage sat down simultaneously.

"Very well. I presume you want answers for those questions." he said, indifference broken only by slight irritation.

The Hokage's silence spoke for itself.

Russ sighed, and prepared to explain. This was going to take a while.

=][=

The Hokage waited for the Inquisitor to explain himself. To act so aloof and arrogant was all too reminiscent of the majority of the fools he dealt with every day, and also... the aged Hokage's scowl grew as memories of his traitorous student Orochimaru resurfaced. Then when the stranger cleared his throat to speak, even those thoughts went from his mind.

"Tell me. What does the term 'demon' imply to you?"

Sarutobi blinked. He hadn't been expecting a question of that nature.

"A demon is one of the nine Tailed Beasts that were formed when the Jyuubi was separated by the Sage of the Six Paths." Hiruzen answered. "That, and any one of the lesser entities around the Elemental Nations."

The stranger 'hmm'-ed and nodded. Briefly, Sarutobi wondered why an answer out of a history textbook was enough to suffice for the man.

"These demons, do they have chakra also?" the Inquisitor asked. The aged Hokage nodded. Neither noticed Naruto sitting rapt at attention and listening in to every word.

"Hm. Well, I would inform you that you face a different sort of daemon than I do. This world is the only world in the entirety of Imperial space that has this chakra."

The Hokage was stunned, to say the least. "Other worlds? Where are you from?"

The Inquisitor sighed in frustration. Both the Kage and the child were starting to lose patience, although both retained their attention on him. When he stood and reached within his coat, Sarutobi quietly prepared a Katon: Infernal Demise Technique under the table. But that turned out to be unnecessary, because he took out some kind of slab of metal, with a wax-sealed strip of paper with blocky writing all over it running down its length. He depressed a button on the device, and around them the air seemed to still, and the noises from the outside vanished completely.

The Inquisitor turned back to them. "Where I am from is the Imperium of Man. All of humankind that is true and faithful to the God-Emperor, our undying lord, is unified. We work, march, and all fight as one. Our enemies are legion; we do all we can to beat back a galaxy that despises us for no reason save that we had the audacity to not lay down and die."

"Within the Imperium are many forces. First among them are the Adeptus Astartes; the Space Marines, the Angels of Death baptized in fire and forged in blood by the holy work of the Emperor himself. They crush and destroy the threats to the Imperium and all of Mankind in the name of the Emperor, and Holy Terra, our ancestral home.

"Yet the Angels of Death do not stand alone. The comrades in arms are the Imperial Guard, the countless billions of men and women conscripted from every corner of the Imperium to fight for the Emperor, and the worlds of the Imperium that they die defending. To maintain the vast and unknowable secrets of the machine god are the tech-priests of Mars, and their Forge Worlds which supply the Imperial War Machine. These are but a few of the comrades of the Space Marines. And they do their duty just as much as any Angel of Death.

"They fight the threat without." The Inquisitor said, glancing between the two in that dome-shaped field around him. "Mankind's enemies are legion; Traitors, who have turned their backs on the Emperor, and have damned themselves to eternal suffering. Mutants, who used to be human though now... are so much worse. Heretics, who fully and knowingly devote themselves to all that is evil and wrong. Xenos, aliens that despise our rightful rule over the galaxy granted unto us by the Emperor, who in turn was granted that by the will of Mankind. And..." In the midst of awed silence, Hiruzen saw a truly hateful scowl on the man's face.

"Daemons. I loathe them utterly; so long as they taint the galaxy, I shall not suffer them to live. They..." An almost feral, demented smile appeared on the Inquisitor's face. "They are the ultimate threat. Them, and the Dark Gods by their wills that they are powered. They are created by the foul rituals of the Heretics, and they are truly the greatest threat amongst those that plague the Imperium."

"I am Inquisitor Gregoriy Russ, of the Ordo Malleus. I am of the Inquisition, we who guard the Imperium away from the public eye. The three holy Ordos - Xenos, Hereticus and Malleus. We fight the alien, the mutant, and the heretic. I fight horrific monstrosities not meant to exist in this reality. And you may take it as a very true fact that it is very thankful you are not a Daemonhost."

=][=

Inquisitor Russ was no orator, but he thought he did a somewhat decent job on the two before him. He left out so much - the eternal bloodshed that was the price of the Imperium's daily survival chief amongst them. Regardless, his statement left both their mouths gaping and the Hokage's pipe had dropped out of his mouth.

"Now, as I was going to say, we must go. I need to see something, and it is concerning that boy." Russ said. It was a calculated move on his part, informing that he needed to act. It showed that he had an agenda of his own. Not that he particularly cared of the opinion of one man amongst millions, ruler of this general area of natives he might have been.

He stood, and to his quiet approval the Hokage and the child followed him out the door and outside, just as the various defenders began to rise from their states of unconsciousness.

* * *

Hi, everybody who reads this. Thanks for the faves, follows and reviews, by the way!

Now, I know right now it's mostly just a bunch of talking. Don't worry, I'll get to the Horror and the Supernatural stuff later. What, you didn't expect to involve 40k in something and not involve Horror? It's not referred to as a 'GRIM, DARK' reality for nothing! Just kidding, you awesome lot. Really though, it's going to get gruesome. Now the question becomes 'Who will survive?'...

Stay tuned and find out! Reviews are very much appreciated.


	3. In the Seal of the Nine-Tailed Fox

The operation outside the tower was that of containment. The shinobi forces had heard that the attacker made it all the way into the Hokage's office. Rumors were flying everywhere, and it even got out that the legendary ANBU commander Yomi was involved in halting the attack. Darker rumors were flying that the demon brat was involved in the whole affair, and that he took down the entirety of the Hokage Tower's defenders to get to the old man in concert with the outsier. Ninja and Civilian alike were discussing the issue all over the village, although the former did it in the safety of their strongholds and hideaways rather than in open public like the latter did.

The ninja forces had set up a killzone outside the tower - by normal convention, this would be a stupidly foolish maneuver. Then again, this was no ordinary shinobi. Their current attacker was most likely not a ninja at all. No ninja in their right mind would simply walk through the tower, however capable they may be.

Kami-sama's blood, not even Maito Gai could manage that sort of feat.

'Well, then again...' went the direction of a silent conversation between chuunin some distance away from the killzone.

The chatter dropped between the hidden members of Konoha's ninja corps as their reconnaisance units - in the form intel-gathering shinobi of all types, ranging from button-pushers that fiddled with thermal detection gear to elite sensory shinobi who even now were drawing information by detecting the patterns of chakra in the building - began to get data from within the Hokage tower. It was an old system that locked down the tower from outside view, and the policy back then was simply 'If it doesn't work, tough!' in the interest of every building's security. That worked against the Konoha defenders now, however, and in the higher echelons of Konoha's command structure already planned for it to be updated.

The sensory shinobi waited, their abilities being utilized to the fullest to see what was happening in there. They were moving around the edge of the perimeter surrounding the Hokage Tower, and reporting all and everything they could learn of what happened inside those walls to their superiors.

Then... surprise. First, two green flashes and one yellow flash of light briefly sprung up, trailing smoke of their respective colours skyward from the top offices. That was the signal that most commanders recognized as the signal to stand down, as all was well. Then, the squads of sensory shinobi sensed the chakras of the Hokage and the demon brat moving out and down through the tower steadily, and if one were to describe it relatively calmly and peacefully. Those who did not sense chakra also said that there were three sources of heat, vibration and movement. Three. This caused some confusion among the ranks of shinobi waiting outside. Needless to say, those laying in wait to spring the trap remained on alert.

Until the front door opened, and the Sandaime Hokage walked through, with the Uzumaki boy and a tall, armored stranger dressed in black following them both.

**=][=**

Hiruzen was expecting his shinobi to respond adequately to this situation. He was still pleased, however, to see that the years of peace had not dulled their reactions too much. In less than five minutes Shikaku, head of the Nara clan and his standing Jounin Commander had scrambled a fighting force of what he counted to be over 100 ANBU and somewhere near a hefty estimate of 400 ranking ninja. Hokage Sarutobi stepped out into the open and made a cutting gesture over at the lines. Most shinobi relaxed marginally, and Commander Shikaku Shushinned over to the Hokage.

"Hokage-sama." the jounin said as he bowed in respect.

Sarutobi nodded. "Report."

"Hai Hokage-sama. The alarms on the Hokage tower were all sprung, so as per protocol I pulled half a division of ranking ninja and fifteen ANBU squads. We were planning to make where we're standing into a killzone. End of report." Shikaku finished, gaze flickering to the Inquisitor behind the Hokage, who nodded in acknowledgement of the jounin commander's presence.

"That will do, Nara-san. Have the forces stand down, there is no need for conflict." 'Not yet anyway' went the unspoken statement. Shikaku nodded, giving a salute and turning to leave.

**=][=**

As the gathered ninja got the command to move out and stand down, the trio of them moved through the returning crowd that started to flood back into the street after being released by the ninja to go about their day. The elder two of their group noticed they were being shadowed by four other ninja who happened to be elite, even by the standards of the ANBU. One was a captain, one an incredibly professional rookie, and the other two making up the gap by being simply exceptionally lethal.

While they hid their faces with masks, they were simply referred to as Weasel, Dog, Hawk and Boar. They were to escort the Hokage while this stranger was in the villlage. Granted, the mission was not official and it was begun only half an hour ago, but as Dog said over and over again, bad habits broke good shinobi. They couldn't afford to let security slack off even in times of peace, or allow their Hokage to go anywhere unguarded.

Needless to say, the ANBU elites kept on their toes, analysing and triple-analyzing every flicker of motion in the area, let alone around the Hokage.

The trio were moving away to one of the commercial districts, more accurately to the cluster of abandoned warehouses that were never used since the Kyuubi incident some years back. That didn't bode well with the ninja at all - Kami alone knew what would go on in any one of those warehouses. Thankfully, the stranger picked only a mildly secluded one. It was inconspicuous more than a useful hostage-taking area, being not much more than a cheap concrete structure consisting of four walls and a roof. But the squad kept in mind that the intruder may have been playing a game within a game, specifically intended to fool them.

The trio they were guarding and/or following their three targets. Currently, those were the three most important figured in the village, excluding the Council. Then again, in clan affairs the Council did tend to hinder rather than help the ninja operations of the village, so the civilians there were most often excluded from the lists of people to be informed. Of course, it went without saying that the ninja Clan Heads were exempt from this method of action, as well as the various military advisors, commanders and operatives of importance.

All that was aside the point, however. Which was why one Uchiha Itachi, bearing the insignia and mask of Weasel shook himself out of that reverie and signalled for Boar and Hawk to take the northwest and southwestern defensive position. Conveniently, the near-identical warehouses offered excellent cover and control of the ground-bound non-shinobi.

Typically, all that a Konoha ninja required in order to gain a great advantage in elevation was to leap upward in any direction, and stick themselves to the walls or the underhangs. From there, it was simply a campaign of suppression.

Their marks went into one of the warehouses, however. That was a pity - the ANBU forces were favorably more suited to the role of stealth operations in enclosed space. Being situated in the centre of a forest gave them plenty of practice. Still, within one of the roomy warehouses was quite favorable, if only slightly less maneuverable.

Weasel signalled for his comrades to take up stealthed positions inside the building. They gave not many outward signs, but subtle cues in their motions informed the ANBU Captain that they received their orders, and were now moving to fulfil his commands.

Weasel moved as well, and looked through the windows from a shadowed alcove.

**=][=**

Naruto Uzumaki was a very confused five-year-old.

First, a tough and scary-looking Jounin came and informed him that he was needed at the Hokage's place. Then he went there and found jiji in a bad mood with the other scary person in the room. Then they did some talking which hurt his feelings, then weird things started happening. He saw hurty light come from the stranger's eyes, and it made Naruto's tummy feel weird. Then he was stuck in a not-hearing-anything bubble and he heard the stranger say some very awesome things. He wanted to hear more, but the stranger had led them out and to this place.

So when the stranger led them into an empty warehouse, he was a little nervous. Other people had led him into warehouses before, but they just did it to beat him up. But jiji was here to stop that, he'd be alright!

Naruto looked up and saw jiji scowling. He didn't like that. It meant bad things were going to happen.

The stranger in black walked a little bit forward, and then put a hand up to his ear.

"This is Inquisitor Russ. The operation is at stage Secundus, I ask you to teleport the Array down to my designated position." he said, then kept looking to the space in front of him with his head slightly lowered.

It stayed like that for a few minutes until a faint white glow, coming up in a wide-based dome to the top of jiji's head. A tremendous flash of orange-yellow light later, and there was a big seat and a few boxes where previously there was nothing.

The tall stranger told Naruto to sit down on the seat. A little bit scared, Naruto glanced up to the old Hokage, who nodded at him. The nod held only a fragment of the usual warmth that jiji usually had.

Naruto hastily complied.

The stranger named Russ, meanwhile, was busy with the boxes. He took out things that briefly resembled some of the devices in Konoha's hospital. Scanning devices and such. The stranger set about making fine-tunings as Naruto started to fidget.

... It was taking a while. Fifteen minutes, which was forever by ninja standards, and the Inquisitor was only half-done with the four tall devices. Even Sarutobi, normally a kindly and patient man, had begun drumming his fingers in irritation. Then as the Inquisitor got started on the last device, Naruto called out "How much longer is this going to take?"

Sarutobi, out of Naruto's sight, was watching the demon container intently. The boy was never this reserved and meek and calm, at any time the old man could recall. Was this simply an effect of this Inquisitor simply being here, or was it more elaborate than that?

But the old man could think no further as the Inquisitor was done in his work.

"Observe." Russ called out, flipping a cover back on one of the boxes and pressing a few buttons, and also unfolding the top of the other box. What was revealed was a device with a flat, circular base and a long, thing attatchment going from the center out to the edge of the base. Sort of like one of the old-time gramophones, without the large thing on top to project the music. They watched the Inquisitor open a small door on the box with the controls, and take out a piece of thick, circular paper.

"There is one thing omnipresent in this galaxy. It is referred to by many names - the Empyrean, the Immaterium, the Great Ocean." Russ began. Both ninja young and old had their eyes and attention fixed on him. "But the most common term for it is the Warp." Both noted how he spat the word out in disgust. Granted, it was not particularly noticeable and a civilian would likely have missed it, but a ninja would not.

"It is an alternate dimension, one of the mind. Thoughts, feelings and emotions in here, in reality, translate into forces unimaginable in the Warp. The laws of reality do not apply there; it is a place of force, of infinite, unimaginable power." Russ continued. He set the piece of circular paper down, and set the center attachment carefully over the exact center of the paper.

"But it is also inhabited. Nay, Infested. And..." he grimaced as the device started up, expecting the worst. The circle of paper on the disk began to spin, and the raised attachment began to lower. Slowly, the disk turned and a bunch of blurs started to appear as the device worked on.

The device's disk and the paper turned. The tension in the room was nigh palpable. Russ especially seemed tense. And in turn, Sarutobi was tense too.

So Naruto still sat, fidgeting, as the two grown-ups waited for a small disc to be drawn out. Eventually, the machine stopped drawing on the circular piece of paper with a small ding. Immediately, the Inquisitor walked over. And he didn't inspect so much as simply glance at the ink markings before he threw back his head with a relieved sigh and a smile. Sarutobi walked forward questioningly.

"Looks like there was nothing to worry about after all..."

**=][=**

Russ was relieved. Not one but two of his greatest fears were disproven. He strode back over to the controls and pushed a few activation studs, murmuring a Mechanicus hymn under his breath as he did so.

"What now?" the Hokage asked behind him.

"Simple. I have no further need to inquire. The thing in his gut - Kyuubi, you called it? It may be a daemon, but it is not of Chaos. It is remarkably clean of the taint of the Warp, too."

"What does that mean?" Naruto piped up, startling the two old men.

Russ thought for but a moment. "I don't have to worry about it."

"Why? It is a demon." Sarutobi lowly said.

"And it is a plain one. A simple entity of the Warp. Not one affiliated to any of the-" Russ was interrupted by a moan from Naruto, who had suddenly doubled over.

"Naruto? What is the matter?" the Hokage yelled out, dashing over to the boy. Cursing, the Lord Inquisitor ran over as well.

As they neared, Naruto's convulsions tipped him over the side of the padded chair. Unfortunately, his head hit the concrete floor with some force. The little boy crumpled down onto the floor and did not rise.

"NARUTO!" Hiruzen bellowed out as he reached the young boy.

As Russ neared, he saw something...

"Hokage. The boy's stomach."

Hiruzen checked, and almost flinched in shock. Gregoriy noted this tic of the old man and looked at the boy's prone and unconscious form.

There was a large and complex array of lights criss-crossing and looping and intersecting all over Naruto's belly. Russ guessed this was the seal. The Hokage's reaction was certainly enough to warrant note of this.

He decided to get some information, firsthand. Again he adjusted his hat so that the brim covered his eyes, and drew in the power of the Empyrean.

Just as he felt the intense magnitude of the awareness brought about by that state, he felt something pull at his psyche.

It pulled his mind out of his own body and into the seal.

**=][=**

Kyuubi no Yoko. The Nine-Tailed Demon Fox, most powerful of the Bjuu. Imprisoned by the Yondaime Hokage of Konoha into the then-infant body of Naruto Uzumaki, and imprisoned within the Shiki Fuuin. Currently, it was roaring in frustration. Twice it had sensed that all-searching gaze now, enhanced by things far beyond the comparitively simple bloodlines that surrounded the vessels of it. That was a gaze enhanced by things it knew far better not to meddle with. That gaze left its own marks, easily identifiable and ones that told the demon fox much. It was a man of power, one who sailed between worlds and judged them, cleansing, purging or outright destroying them if he found those worlds wanting.

Part of Kyuubi, a deep and well-hidden one that would NEVER be let out, wanted to squeak and hide in the safety of the Shiki Fuuin. Needless to say, that part was easily drowned out by the roaring inferno which screamed for warning the man of his sheer stupidity, the idiocy and utter disregard for their own lives that all humans seemed to have.

Then suddenly it sensed its host was making an appearance. His manifestation was exactly the same as the kit was in reality; orange-garbed and short. Rather pathetic, really, if one thought about it. The kit couldn't even muster up the imagination to make himself look better, even in his own mind.

The boy was just coming to when there came a great bending, a huge twisting of something... above. Then, two more people manifested themselves inside the boy's mindscape.

The first was the Sandaime Hokage. Though the difference was that here, in the kitling's mind, the ape bore an aura that was kind and grandfatherly, and intensively caring. And loved. The mortal stood, blinking and ankle-deep in the water that all but flooded the kit's consciousness.

The second was... Kyuubi tensed and rose to its feet, tails raising in tension. That second black-armoured figure was the source of that infuriatingly unknown mental prying. The black-armored figure 'hmm'-ed.

"Not the expected result, but acceptable. We are in Naruto's mind, Hokage."

The Sandaime blanched and leant against the wall, looking around and taking in everything. Kyuubi's contemptuous snort alerted them both, and they turned to see the cage which was the manifestation of the Shiki Fuuin, and the Tailed Beast behind it.

Sarutobi jerked back, preparing hand-seals which didn't respond, mainly because of his mental manifestation lacking any chakra.

The armoured stranger merely walked forward to the manifestation of the cage, but still lurking a hair's breadth from where Kyuubi remembered the tip of his middle, longest claw reaching.

"And here we are, before the cage of the beast." he muttered.

Kyuubi grew incensed. "**Who do you think you are, whelp?**"

The stranger gave no response. He simply closed his eyes. Milliseconds later, the air in the sewer that was Naruto's mind made manifest seemed to arc and change somehow. Then, spikes of pain drove themselves into all three of the others' minds.

"I am many things. Lord. Inquisitor. Captain. All to name a few." he murmured out amusedly. "But I think the term you are looking for is 'psyker'."

Kyuubi froze, even as the phantom pains of that attack faded. Psyker... the Tailed Beast had not heard the term, truth be told. But it got a very unpleasant feeling of knowing of where the man was going.

"**You... Do you know?**" the caged Beast asked. "**Do you know of the Things out There?**"

"A rather crude term. But yes. I am aware of what you are speaking of. Tell me, to what extent are you aware?" the Inquisitor asked in return. The Kyuubi no Yoko shifted, perhaps even in amusement.

Until Hiruzen, a forgotten factor in Naruto's mindscape until now, exclaimed out aloud: "Inquisitor! What in Kami-sama's name do you think you are doing?!"

**=][=**

Russ smiled. He should have guessed the native would make such a reaction. He did take the liberty of skimming through Hiruzen's mind also, as he was in the boy's mindscape alongside him. The faux-daemon before him was a sensitive topic in the village, apparently. However, Russ internally was disgusted at the weakness of the populace - even the mere object of foxes in the most general of terms was immediately linked to the subject.

If he were to make an educated guess, he would say that to counter such forceful thinking was to respond with equally forceful action.

"Conversing with the prisoner. It is important to know all angles of the situation in any proper investigation." Russ coolly replied. He was, after all, an Inquisitor. And stuck on this backwater for Emperor alone knew how long.

"You... you speak with it? Freely?"

"No. As you may be able to observe, I am the one not in a cage." The Inquisitor was amused, gratuitously so. Oh, how the old man was going to get a shock...

"**Do either of you wish to waste my-**"

"Silence, Warpspawn. I shall return to you in a moment."

He sensed that the faux-daemon was surprised once again. Unsurprising, given the circumstances.

"Now, what grievance do you have, Hokage?"

"You are conversing with the Nine-Tailed Fox itself!"

"As I said before, it is in a cage, not I. Additionally, I am a psyker. Which means that here? In the mindscape?" He grinned slightly under his hat and behind his collar. "I am the master here. Except for the boy."

"Naruto?" As the Hokage spoke that word, the mental manifestation of their current host appeared.

"Um... hi, jiji." Naruto muttered out. Judging by the way the edges of his form flickered and blinked, the boy was dazed. The Inquisitor saw the signs of mental wear and tear; the child's mind could likely not handle prolonged action.

"Boy. Come here, please." The orange-garbed child did so. Russ noticed that all the recent behavior was really out of character for the boy... or was it? A closer glance at the boy's personality showed that he was miserable indeed. From... the Inquisitor had to forcibly restrain himself from screaming in fury as he withdrew his tendrils of thought out of the boy's character.

"Here it is, child. This Kyuubi you Konohans are so fascinated with. We are inside you."

"The cage is the seal. There it is." Russ commented, looking down and to the boy for his reaction.

To his credit, he remained resolute. The Inquisitor quietly approved. The boy was taking this all in stride. Ignorance, sometimes, was bliss after all.

**=][=**

Naruto stood in the flooded sewer, ankle-deep in water with Hokage-jiji and Inquisitor-dono, looking up at the big cage. He was wondering, how did the fox stay in that cage? How did they get it there?

Sarutobi and Russ started conversing again. Naruto stepped closer to the cage. Kyuubi mirrored the boy's actions by laying its head down on its front paws, near the cage itself.

"**Boy. You are the master here. This is your mind. Why are you laying idle?**"

"Why are you?" Naruto countered.

The Nine-Tailed Fox was momentarily stunned by a child's innocence. It retried its efforts.

"**That man is not like you and your fellows. He... knows. Of things. Things that you likely should not know of.**" The fox's tone was at once sly and beguiling. Naruto tilted his head to the side.

"Yeah, he hasn't got any Cat-ra."

Kyuubi momentarily was taken aback again before it lowered its snout into its paws in hopelessness. Naruto began shouting.

"Hey! Come on baka fox! I'm talking! Hello?" the young boy continued. The Kyuubi merely put its paw over its eyes.

The two older men in the boy's mind stopped to watch the spectacle, chuckling, before resuming their own conversation.

**=][=**

"What did you have in mind?" Hiruzen asked. Russ thought for but a moment before he answered.

"I shall explain it later. For now we can watch, no?" the two men briefly shared a laugh as they kept watching a chagrined Kyuubi cringe as Naruto kept babbling in child-speak at it.


End file.
